Hellmann's Mayonnaise — Wholesale Supply

Two customers, one pallet

Almost every serious mayonnaise order we quote is really two orders travelling together. One is a grocery order: glass jars and squeeze bottles, bought against a planogram, reordered on a shelf cycle, judged on how the jar looks when a shopper picks it up. The other is a kitchen order: ten-litre pails, jerrycans and dispensing pouches, bought against a menu, reordered when the store cupboard empties, judged on nothing except whether it arrived. Same brand, same producing plants, entirely different conversation. Knowing which of the two you are, or in what proportion you are both, is the single most useful thing you can tell us before we look at allocation.

The distinction runs through the freight as well. Retail cartons palletise into neat tiers and behave predictably. Rigid pails do not: they are tall, they are round, they waste floor space, and they do not accept another pallet on top of them without deforming the lids of the tier beneath. A load that is half retail and half foodservice is built in two zones rather than mixed, and we would rather explain that at quotation than have a receiving warehouse discover it.

Real, Light and the plant-based line are three declarations

Traders tend to treat the variants as flavours of the same article. On paper they are not. Real mayonnaise is egg-based, and egg is the first thing an importer in the Gulf, in Israel or in a market with a vegetarian trade asks about. The Light variant changes the nutrition declaration. The plant-based line removes the egg entirely and carries a different declaration set, different certification questions and, in most markets, a different retail buyer. It is a separate listing, never a substitution, and an importer who accepts it as a swap on a short shipment will hear about it from their customer.

Mustard also appears in the declarations of parts of the range. If you are supplying a channel that screens for allergens — school catering, airline catering, hospital supply — ask for the declaration of the specific article before the pro-forma rather than after, because the answer sits with the recipe and the producing plant and not with the brand name.

What heat does to an emulsion

Mayonnaise is oil held in water by egg. The pack is entirely stable in ordinary ambient conditions; sustained heat is what stresses it, and at the extreme the jar shows that as separation, or as a film of oil sitting on top. Nobody buys a separated jar, even with an intact seal and six months of life left on it, so the commercial exposure on this line sits in the condition of the goods on arrival rather than in the product.

The controls are dull and they work. Pallets are stowed away from the roof line and away from the doors, never against a heat source in a mixed box. Loading is scheduled so nothing stands in direct sun on an open quay waiting for a slot. Cartons are wrapped and corner-boarded so the stack cannot migrate, and on tropical routing we manage condensation against the carton as well as against the jar. Where a season and a destination justify it we will quote temperature-controlled carriage instead, and the handling assumption behind the price is written into the offer so there is no argument later about which one you bought.

Remaining life is a term, not a hope

On this line more than any other in the category, dating is negotiated rather than accepted. We fix the minimum remaining shelf life at arrival on the pro-forma, set against the sailing you expect and the clearance window you realistically get, and batch and best-before detail goes onto the packing list so your rotation is planned from fact. If you are listing mayonnaise into a slow-turning channel — a developing distribution network, a market where the fixture is new — raise it in the first message, because it changes which allocation is worth offering you.

Halal, Arabic panels and the questions asked first

An egg-based product in a Gulf enquiry generates paperwork questions before it generates price questions. Which certification a given article can travel with is something we put in writing for the allocation in front of us; it is not a property of the trademark and we decline to treat it as one. GCC retail expects Arabic-language labelling and the approved mark; Saudi entry expects Arabic ingredient declarations; where an additional panel is needed it is applied in Madrid to approved artwork before the pallet moves.

Because the goods are EU-produced, the file that travels is the standard European export set: commercial invoice, packing list to case level, export declaration, transport document, Certificate of Origin, and a EUR.1 movement certificate where a preferential agreement covers your entry. Health or free-sale certification is arranged where a destination asks for it. If you have not imported EU food before, our explanation of what EU-sourced actually means covers what the phrase does and does not guarantee at your border.

Where the jars go and where the pails go

The pattern in our enquiry book, which is not a market study and should not be read as one: Gulf retail and hospitality takes both halves at once, with sachets and dispenser packs pulled along by delivery and quick-service growth. African demand is weighted towards catering pails and jerrycans for hotel, canteen and contract kitchens, and grows faster there than on the grocery jar. European and Eastern European buyers take the retail jar and the squeeze bottle with the pourable dressings behind them. The formats differ by lane; the condition conversation is identical everywhere.

Distributors who supply professional kitchens as well as grocery usually add the Knorr stock and seasoning range to the same booking, because one chef requisitions bouillon, sauce mixes and mayonnaise on one order form and there is no reason for those to arrive as three shipments.